S.B. Ignace IV d’Antioche

This article reproduces a homily delivered by Patriarch Ignatius IV of Antioch in Hanover in September 1997, on the occasion of the feast of the Exaltation of the Cross in the Byzantine calendar. Belonging to the homiletic genre, the text offers a theological meditation on the mystery of the Cross, articulating abasement and divine love, abandonment and resurrection. The central idea is that Christ's cry of abandonment on Golgotha does not signify despair, but constitutes the turning point at which the human will adheres to the divine will, transforming the infinite distance between God and man into the dwelling place of the Spirit. On the theological level, the homily situates this reading within the Eastern Tradition, distinguishes it from the Anselmian interpretation of satisfaction, and draws on Maximus the Confessor and Isaac the Syrian to affirm the inseparability of the Cross and Pascha.